A department of WHAT?!?!?!?!
Just when you thought it couldn't get ANY sillier, comes this gem from Washington. It seems that my esteemed Senior Senator, Mark Dayton, has decided that our federal government needs yet another Cabinet level position (he obviously hasn't learned any lessons from the fed's reaction to Katrina has he?). So he has introduced legislation to form (sit down for this one) a Department of PEACE AND NON-VIOLENCE! Yep, the same Senator who closed his office and ran back to Minnesota to hide in his mansion on Lake Minnetonka because he heard that Washington DC might be a target for terrorist attacks is proposing that we form a department of Peace. The budget for this new department is supposed to come out of the DOD budget, but we all know how that works. Give the federal government a penny and they'll steal a dollar! Cover your wallets friends.
In a related note, on 9/11 Colleen Rowley (former FBI whistleblower and candidate for congress in Minnesota's 2nd Congressional District) was the featured speaker at a Washington DC conference that was being held to support a similar bill in the House (sponsored by Rep Dennis Kucinich). The bill, H.R. 3760, (which can be found here) calls for the creation of a "Peace Academy" that would be modeled after military schools such as West Point, would rename January 1 from "New Years Day" to "Peace Day" where citizens would "be encouraged to observe and celebrate the blessings ofpeace and endeavor to create peace in the coming year." and would develop such needed bureaucratic offices as the "Office of Peace Education and Training" and the "Office of Domestic Peace Activities" (not to be confused with the "Office of International Peace Activities" and positions such as the "Assistant Secretary for Peaceful Coexistance and Non-Violent Conflict Resolution".
I wish, dear reader that I could tell you that this is satire, but sadly it is all too real. The resolution already has 60 co-sponsors in the House. Some of the co-sponsors are the usual Minnesota suspects - Rep Betty McCollum, Rep Martin Olav Sabo and Rep Jim Oberstar - but it also includes some of the usual national suspects such as Rep. Cynthia McKinney (GA), Rep. Charles Rangel (NY) and Rep. Maxine Waters (CA).
My dear friends and readers know that I despise the inflammatory rhetoric (using such words as "moonbat" and "chickenhawk") as it detracts from the debate, rather than adding to it, but I really have to wonder seriously about the mental health of the people sponsoring this legislation. Do they not understand that the world is full of dangerous people who see this kind of nonsense as weakness? Are they really that out of touch with reality that this seems "sensible" to them? I have to ask in all honesty for I simply do not understand their logic in this.
Dear, dear readers.....this is why elections are so very important. Trivial issues like this should not be the focus of our elected leadership at a time when we are facing multiple crises (Katrina and Rita clean-up, Iraq elections pending and Afghan elections just finished). Serious times demand serious leadership and I desperately hope that my friends here in CD2 reject Ms. Rowley's bid for Congress, that my neighbors in CD4 (Rep McCollum's district), CD5 (Rep Sabo's district) and CD8 (Rep Oberstar's district) find serious leaders to replace them with and that the good people of Minnesota elect a serious leader, like Rep Mark Kennedy, to the Senate seat that Mr. Dayton will soon be vacating.
posted by The Lady Logician at 3:52 PM permalink
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